


Frostbite

by alamorn



Category: Dredd (2012)
Genre: Case Fic, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 05:22:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13427670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alamorn/pseuds/alamorn
Summary: Crime doesn't stop for a little thing like a blizzard.





	Frostbite

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rebecca_selene](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebecca_selene/gifts).



The weather had been destroyed along with the rest of the world. Dredd was used to unregulated extremes, and even liked them. There was less crime on the streets when it was so hot the pavement went soft, or so cold exposed flesh frost bit in minutes.

Today, it was cold. Ice rimed the streets and walls of Mega City One in thick glittering panes. It almost made the city beautiful. There’d been fresh snow at some point a few days ago, but that hadn’t lasted, quickly turning to brown and grey slush, pushed around by cars and feet, and the bitter, biting wind.

The wind was the real problem. It cut through the walls of megastructures and men alike. Crime was down, but the meat wagons were roaming the city at all hours, picking up those unfortunate enough to be caught outside with nowhere to go.

Dredd knew that many of Mega City One’s homeless had gotten themselves arrested to be in out of the cold, but the cubes couldn’t hold them all.

Unfortunately, the Hall of Justice had received a tip off about some criminals using the upcoming snowstorm as cover. Human traffickers, bringing their cargo up from the south and aiming for the northern edge. Dredd had volunteered to stop them, and the Chief Judge had raised an eyebrow and said, “And how will you find them, when the storm knocks out our sensors and cameras and communications?”

“Give me Anderson,” he said. “She’ll hear them.”

And the Chief Judge did.

 

They staked out the route they were expecting the traffickers to take, tucked into a side alley that mostly protected them from the wind, but occasionally funneled it all right towards them. They were bundled up on their Lawmasters, both wearing standard issue winter gear, lined with reflective fabric that was supposed to turn body heat back towards you and a quilted layer meant to keep it there. Dredd found himself skeptical of the claim, or maybe it was just that the wind ran in at his waist and his throat and stole all the warmth anyway. He had his helmet wedged uncomfortably over a fleece mask, and another reflective neck warmer pulled up over his chin. Hand warmers were tucked in his gloves and his boots and at the small of his back.

He felt less like a Judge than a poorly swaddled child, so thickly wrapped it was hard to move. And yet he was still cold. Looking over at Anderson only had him colder — she’d pulled her helmet off so she could hear the traffickers coming, and the soft hat she’d replaced it with seemed to do nothing against the wind. The skin he could see around her eyes was a bright pink, and her eyelashes stuck together with snow.

“They’re coming,” she said, voice muffled under her layers.

He nodded, and readied himself.

When it reached them, he realized he hadn't readied himself _enough_. It was a crawler, not a truck, with the treads and armoring of a tank, and large enough to hold fifty people, if you didn't care for their comfort. He was fairly certain the traffickers didn't care about comfort, and chances were there were more than fifty people in there.

"How many?" he asked.

Anderson might have scowled. It was hard to tell under her layers. "A lot. Five guards, one driver."

"Only five?" He frowned. Why wouldn't the victims try to free themselves? Many, against five…some would die, but he'd have made that sacrifice, if he were in that crawler.

The crawler passed, and they waited for the snow to kick up again, until visibility was nearly gone. Then they turned their Lawmasters into the street and followed the crawler's tracks. He was tempted to speed up, overtake the crawler and use a high-ex round to take out a tread, but that sort of driving on snow would just leave him spun out and crashed.

So slow and steady did it, and when the crawler went over their planted mines, it shuddered to painful halt, thrust sideways into a snowdrift as tall as Anderson, armored belly exposed, they were in position.

The passenger door of the driver's compartment swung open, perp brandishing a machine gun. Dredd took him out with two careful shots as Anderson swung around to the rear, Lawgiver at the ready. "Shit," she said. "They're killing the victims."

She slapped an explosive on the rear door as he headed for the driver. The crawler shuddered as he stepped onto the metal of the driver's compartment. They'd been blasting the heat in there and it hadn't all fled yet. He overheated immediately, and sweat slid down his neck as he levelled his gun at the driver, said, "Judgement passed," and pulled the trigger.

He could hear more gunshots echoing against the metal, and the vast, snowy expanse of the street. The wind kicked up again, hiding the walls of the buildings around them. They could have been anywhere, in this snow.

But they were here, passing judgement, so he opened the reinforced door to the belly of the crawler and stepped through to the tilted world beyond.

If the driver's compartment had been warm, the belly was stifling. He shot one guard as he came through the door. On the other end, the crawler was belching steam and victims onto the snow through the door Anderson had blasted opene. There was no more shooting, so he figured Anderson had taken out the last two guards. He pushed his way through the crowd to verify that.

He stepped over eight bodies to do it. The living were milling, dirty and afraid, and lunging for the exit, then flinching back into the warmth of the crawler. None of them were dressed for the weather, and the clothes they wore were damp with sweat. They'd freeze in an instant.

"Dredd to Control," he said, as he elbowed his way through the crowd. "We're ready for the meat wagon. Thirteen dead." He glanced around, tried for a head count, gave up. "At least fifty living."

There was no response, just the strident fuzz of white noise. He broke through and found Anderson stapling up a child. Fourteen, if he had to guess, huge eyes, a cloud of black hair, and a hole in her shoulder.

The girl was staring at the bodies of the guards next to her like she wanted to make sure they didn't start moving again. He could hear Anderson talking to her soothingly, but he didn't pay attention to what she was saying. He squinted up at the white, white sky. Interference from the snow, or something else?

"Dredd to Control," he tried again. "We're ready for the meat wagon." He glanced down at Anderson and the kid again. There was one more civilian spilled out on the snow, head a mess of gore. Blood froze quickly in this cold, leaving an ugly, pink slushed ice. "Fourteen dead. At least fifty living."

No response.

Anderson glanced up at him, and patted the girl on her good shoulder, sent her back into the press with her wound stapled together. She pulled her gloves on as she stood, and her fingers were a bright, painful pink. She tucked her hands into her armpits as she came to stand next to him, looking over the contents of the crawler. Some of them were crying, some shouting, some wailing, some whispering urgently to each other. The noise and the cold made his head throb. If their thoughts were as loud as their voices, he couldn't imagine she was doing much better.

"Problem?"

"Yeah. We lost comms."

She sighed. "Nothing can ever be easy. Think we can take shelter in a Megablock?"

He nodded. "Hard part'll be getting them to one."

He watched as she looked around, trying to locate a Megablock. The snow was so thick in the air that the world might have ended five feet from them and they never would have known. There was no way to get the crawler moving again, not tipped on its side and blasted as it was.

She pointed with her chin, keeping her hands in her armpits. "There's a Megablock half a mile that way."

"We could get there," he agreed. He didn't say what he was thinking. She knew anyway, after all.

"We can't stay here," she said. "With the doors open, they'll lose all the heat and freeze where they stand, anyway. Better to lose some fingers than to die."

"Don't know if they'll see it the same way," he said, but allowed, "I'll get them moving. You lead."

When he told the civilians what was happening, they stared blankly at him. Then one man, long and thin and gaunt, said, "You've killed us, Judge."

Dredd's lips tightened. "Take the clothes from the guards, and the ones they killed. Give them to the smallest here. We're running it. You can make it half a mile."

Then man stared at him, standing out only because of his height. "You've killed us," he said again, shaking his head, and knelt to pull the clothes from the guard nearest him.

The crowd descended in a flurry, snatching for the chance at another thin layer to protect them from the cold. Dredd went to his Lawmaster and pulled out the rest of his hand warmers and started passing them out. When he was done, he took Anderson's. When everyone was as prepared as they could be, he nodded at Anderson.

"Follow me!" she called. "Do not lose contact with the person ahead of you! Hold hands, or shirts, or whatever you have to, but do not let go! Judge Dredd will bring up the rear. Do not get behind him! Do not stop moving! Let's go!"

She kept her Lawmaster at a steady pace, slow enough that the smallest of the civilians could keep up. Dredd watched them unspool past him, a wavering line of terrified people that disappeared into the snow. When the last, the girl Anderson had stapled up, stepped out into the snow, he started his Lawmaster at a crawl behind her.

It took twenty minutes to go half a mile, but they didn't lose a single one.

When they regrouped in the center of the Megablock, surrounded by gawkers, Anderson worked her way over to him, pulling down her scarfs and mufflers to reveal chapped lips. When she was next to him, she said, "Half of them are mutants."

"Figures," he grunted.

"They don't need to be processed," she said, and he turned to her so fast his frozen muscles screamed.

"Explain."

Her jaw was set mulishly. "You know what happens to mutants in the Hall of Justice. None of them will be as useful as me. They've suffered enough already, and Control doesn't have a head count."

"Anderson…" he said warningly.

"Dredd," she said back. "I know what I'm saying, and I know why I'm saying it. They're just people, Dredd. Like me. They won't survive outside the walls."

He grunted, unwilling to commit either way. "What's your plan."

"Let those who want to…slip away. That's all. We never got a count," she said again.

He stood there, waiting for his fingers to warm, and thought. Before he'd met Anderson, worked with her, he never would have considered the idea. The law was clear, and he was the law, and so his duty was clear. Anderson had muddled things.

"When you're checking them for frostbite…" he started and had to stop, chew the thought over a moment longer. "I won't ask what other advice you give them."

She let out a deep, relieved sigh, and knocked her elbow against his. "Thanks."

"Anderson," he said and she looked at him. "Don't mention it."

She nodded, and went back among the crowd while he stayed at the door and carefully did not notice as one by one, victims slipped away.

When she returned to his side, the crowd was thinner, though he could not have said who had left. He wouldn't report them, wouldn't hunt them, but he couldn't bring himself to wish them well, either.

"Have you tried Control again?" she asked. He looked up at the heavy concrete war armoring covering the skylight. When she followed his gaze, she shrugged. "Sides aren't down. Might still work."

"Dredd to Control," he said. "Can you hear me?"

No answer.

"Looks like we've got a wait yet." He looked over the civilians again. The girl Anderson had stapled up was gone. "Did you get a count?"

"Fifty-two," she said.

He hated this part. The waiting. There was no justice to be meted out here, no perps to sentence. Only victims to protect.

So he waited until the wind died down and Control answered his call and the meat wagon arrived and it was over.

 

And then, a week later, when the temperature had bounded up to the sixties and the snow melted in tidal waves, he went to fetch Anderson for another mission.

When she opened the door he saw a girl in the back of the room, fourteen, big eyes, a cloud of hair.

"Anderson…" he said warningly.

"Have you met my cousin?" she asked, opening the door further. "She's thinking of becoming a Judge, so I got dispensation for her to visit." She tapped the side of her head. "We've got a lot in common."

He glared first at the girl, who glared back, and then at Anderson, who said, "Do you trust me?"

And he had to admit that he did.


End file.
